Quotes of the day

posted at 9:23 pm on October 26, 2012 by Allahpundit

Four years after he was elected as a self-described ‘hopemonger’ promising a new post-partisan era, President Barack Obama is trying to claw his way to re-election with an ugly, divisive campaign in which he is playing the role of fearmonger-in-chief…

[I]f Obama is re-elected the way he has run his campaign may make it almost impossible for him to govern effectively – let alone in the spirit of the ‘better angels of our nature’ that Abraham Lincoln cited in his first inaugural speech and that Obama used to love quoting.

It was John McCain who said in 2008 that he would not ‘take the low road to the highest office in the land’.

A senior Romney strategist who asked not to be named said they expected more attacks from Obama. “The Chicago guys know that he is below 50 on both ballot and approval,” he told National Journal. “It is not that Obama likes to be a hatchet man. They think they have got to bring Romney back down by bringing his negatives back up…. But it is dangerous to have the president himself doing it.”

Madden called it “unfortunate he has to close the final days of the campaign this way.” But that is how most campaigns end, with one candidate ratcheting up the attack rhetoric and the other one trying to stay above the fray. In past campaigns, the one mounting the assault is often the one who either feels the election is slipping away or who finds it impossible to accept that the challenger is making the race so close.

***

What is President Obama doing? What votes is he trying to get? I said last week he had better find ways to appeal to more white voters, especially white working women, or he was going to lose. Well, the Obama campaign must have had a meeting and decided it needed the campaign message to center on the president’s childish, not-quite-cute name-calling, highlighted by vulgar insults. In the meeting it was obviously decided that the clumsy use of “Romnesia” could stay, but that if the president used his own mouth to call Mitt Romney a “bull*****er” that would really appeal to…? Appeal to whom? I have no idea what the Obama campaign is about, 11 days before the election.

In the final stretch, Obama’s campaign isn’t about offering hope and change but is about appealing to a coarse ignorance that he sees in voters.

***

But even looking beyond the biased analyses being published by liberal sources, the refusal of many Democrats to accept the reality of the Romney surge may be rooted in something more emotional than just skewed poll numbers. Many if not most liberals share the attitude of contempt for the Republicans that were so easily discerned in the attitudes of both President Obama and Vice President Biden during the debates. Though most Americans have rejected the attempt by the president’s campaign to define Romney as a heartless plutocrat or a monster, liberals bought it hook, line and sinker. The idea that such a person could have caught and passed Obama in the space of a few short weeks seems impossible to them not so much because they think the numbers don’t support this thesis but because they just don’t want it to be so.

Rather than debunking Romney’s wave, liberal analysts who seek to deny it are merely confirming their inability to look dispassionately at what has occurred. Democrats living in liberal echo chambers need a reality check.

***

We shouldn’t be talking about this silliness — Big Bird, “bull­s—-er” or a girl’s “first time.”

We should be talking about The Issues, we keep telling ourselves. But in the waning days of the presidential campaign, these are the issues — binders full of cultural issues that continue to divide us and by which Barack Obama hopes to win reelection…

Obama reasoned correctly that he had the majority with him, especially among women and youth, for many of whom these debates seem antiquated to not-applicable. Hence, a new Obama ad by the creator and star of HBO’s “Girls,” Lena Dunham, in which she compares voting for the first time (for a man who understands women) to, you know, “doing it” for the first time. It’s . . . what it is: a message to young women that losing one’s virginity is top of the bucket list, but first you gotta vote for the president who will give you free contraception.

The same ol’ culture wars. But, of course, women have had access to birth control for decades, and no one is trying to take it away. Anyone who suggests otherwise may have been spending too much time with Big Bird.

***

[A] funny thing happened over the next six weeks: Obama’s own cue balls shriveled. Biden had offered up a deft campaign slogan encompassing both domestic and foreign policy: “Osama’s dead and General Motors is alive.” But, as the al-Qaeda connections to Benghazi dribbled out leak by leak, the “Osama’s dead” became a problematic boast and, left to stand alone, the General Motors line was even less credible. Avoiding the economy and foreign affairs, Obama fell back on Big Bird, and binders, and bayonets, just to name the “B”s in his bonnet. At the second presidential debate, he name-checked Planned Parenthood, the General Motors of the American abortion industry, half a dozen times, desperate to preserve his so-called gender gap. Yet oddly enough, the more furiously Obama and Biden have waved their binders and talked up Sandra Fluke, the more his supposed lead among women has withered away. So now he needs to enthuse the young, who turned out in such numbers for him last time. Hence, the official campaign video (plagiarized from Vladimir Putin of all people) explaining that voting for Obama is like having sex. The saddest thing about that claim is that, for liberals, it may well be true.

Even a narrow win for Obama, though, would not reestablish anything like the mandate and amity the president enjoyed on his Inauguration Day. The reason is that, as the Obama coalition diminished, Obama no longer disguised the prejudices, inflections, outlook, and approach of the progressive movement. A confessed reader of Andrew Sullivan’s hysterical web site, the president has taken on the maximalist characteristics of the liberal blogosphere. He is scornful and contemptuous of Romney, as could be seen in his patronizing lecture on aircraft carriers and submarines during the third debate. His campaign seizes on the most trivial comments—“I like Big Bird”; “Binders full of women”—to engage in juvenile jibes that would not make the first cut at the Late Show writers’ meeting. His rallies have become self-congratulatory comedy hours in which the assembled Democrats laugh heartily at the insults and zingers the president throws Romney’s way. Obama has been on a seemingly nonstop tour of television shows hosted by late-night comics. His new attack line that the Republican nominee has “Romnesia” was, as the vice president might say, literally taken from liberal blogs. The vice president even asked his audience at a recent rally whether it had watched The Daily Show the night before. The men who hold the highest offices in the most powerful country in the history of the world have been debased to the point where they look like fill-in guests on Up with Chris Hayes.

The Democrats allowed the progressive movement’s hatred of Bush to take over their old and storied political party. That party and movement found a champion and a path to power in Obama, but the electoral forces on which his power relied were unstable. In 2008, he satisfied the left and won the middle. Once in power, though, he kept the left satisfied and lost the middle and right.

“The minute he starts playing small ball, the minute he starts making all these snippy little remarks, it’s over for him,” Steyn said. “He can’t be a dark and malevolent and attack ad kind of candidate. He has to be Mr. ‘Sunny,’ Mr. ‘Hope,’ and Mr. ‘Change.’ And because he didn’t run on any of that, and he’s basically left at 10 days before the election to resurrect that character, I think was a fatal miscalculation.”

Blowback

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I heard KOOLAID trying to lure Bmore with go go boots… you have to say it three times my friend LOL!

Good evening all.

uncommon sense on October 27, 2012 at 1:59 AM

…wow!…I can’t read right I’m so tired! (by Friday…I’m wiped!)…you guys are always using that expression coming and going…I thought u s was going through the threads for the day…and saying good night…
I always..just leave! LOL

…wow!…I can’t read right I’m so tired! (by Friday…I’m wiped!)…you guys are always using that expression coming and going…I thought u s was going through the threads for the day…and saying good night…
I always..just leave! LOL

KOOLAID2 on October 27, 2012 at 2:14 AM

Like to keep everyone on their toes… makes me a harder target to hit LOL!

Sorry folks, gotta go. Doing an interview in the morning with Pimp with a Limp, airing Monday I think. A wide ranging, in depth discussion from growing roses by peeing on them to avoiding plump butted people on airplanes and buses. The President, I’m told, will be calling in for color commentary.

Yeah..the ABR’s..true cons voting Obama, paul bots..
those who let gumby lead them around like a cat in heat..
not the most optimistic.
I just scroll on by.
It will be..what it will be-I cant freak out 24/7.
I have a lot of real life stuff to deal with daily.

Hey bazil, long time no play any tunes with you :) How is the Sunshine and cirus state? you ready for the extreme weather?

uncommon sense on October 27, 2012 at 2:13 AM

LOL…you have a lot of room to talk..Fl is sane compared to Cali..lol
I tease.
Well.. we had two major lib papers endorse r&r..tasty. Spasms as we speak.
I drove in the extreme weather today..nada compared to other storms..
And yes..long time no see. I still love my ska. Just put on my Christmas list a couple Ska Cd’s.
Very nice to see you..been a while. I hope you and yours are well.

I knew you forgot about cheese boobs..
remember..we are voting in them. :)

I think we gave kool aide a stroke lmao

bazil9 on October 27, 2012 at 2:54 AM

Oh, sh*t! I forgot that part. I thought we were wearing them if we won the election. Oh, this is too funny. I live in a small conservative town. The lady manning the polling station will probably be my jr. high teacher. Lolz

I was just thinking about Hurricane Sandy vis-a-vis the POTUS campaign. For Obama it’s the ultimate “Squirrel!“, to distract from Benghazi-gate and even economy stuff, and give him sympathetic face time on TV without any embarrassing questions attached. Even if the federal response to Sandy is lacking, there won’t be enough time for it to affect Obama before election day. For Bush and Katrina, it took months before the sh*tstorm really got swirling.

For Romney, I can’t see an upside re: Sandy, but for Obama, it might help halt his slide.

I saw about 30 seconds of Special Ed Shultz last night and he is in full mode race card, having some bottom of the basement Wesley Clark-ish ex-”military” old guy on who I’d never heard on who was practically screaming “The only reason my party the Republicans don’t want Obama re-elected has nothing to do with his content of character and everything to do with him being black!!!” I wonder how gone that type will be about a week from now.

Just when I think the Kos Kids couldn’t be anymore out of touch with reality…

Let’s think about this, Romney is the one looking very unconfident, I mean when you see him give a speech he looks nervous and doesn’t look happy, he knows he is losing. Obama definitely looks like a winner he’s a lot more calm and does not seem nervous.

————

Plus, If He was really winning (2+ / 0-)

Would he need to Photoshop his crowds? Granted it could be a bad stitch job but knowing the Republicans he would definitely do it.

————-

You can tell Romney looks devastated (7+ / 0-)

All his life he’s been told how great he is. I really believe he thought he could win buy the Presidency with wads of cash and a phony smile like he has everything else in his life. It’s just now dawning on him that his life’s dream is going up in flames.

————–

Plus, the flop-sweat……dead giveaway. (1+ / 0-)

—————

He looks desperate (1+ / 0-)

He’s frantically going on about momentum and him winning, and you can tell he’s not even convinced himself. And the media, try as they might, are doing the same thing I think to a bit more effect, but it’s still ringing pretty hollow even in their “Very Serious People” speak they employ when things get down to the wire.

I totally get what he’s trying to project, and don’t blame him for doing it, but he sucks at it. A better politician could pull off this kind of act.

I’m concerned with how the populations of Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, and LA respond to a Romney win.

listens2glenn on October 26, 2012 at 11:53 PM

Coming from Chicago, you saw what happened when the Bulls kept winning championships. I’m voting early and getting out of Dodge. I have no confidence in Emmanuel to contain the violence–it is coming, either way.

I’m concerned with how the populations of Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, and LA respond to a Romney win.

listens2glenn on October 26, 2012 at 11:53 PM

Don’t be. It will be disgusting how this meme is eventually used, probably next week, to try to sway the vote. As I remember on Drudge, there was black-on-white violence last time immediately after he won.

In the campaign autopsies that will start in less than two weeks, Oct. 19 could be identified as the exact date that any remnant of Obama’s call for hope and change vanished. The president has descended to a new Nixonian level of slander and slur. Hooting about “Romnesia” and now attributing the idea that Mitt Romney is a “bull*****er” to a 6-year-old girl is where Obama has taken us.

I look forward to penning a political epitaph on election night. I may even prewrite it and post the hell out of it all over the open thread.

“Even a narrow win for Obama, though, would not reestablish anything like the mandate and amity the president enjoyed on his Inauguration Day.”

And I submit that Barack Obama doesn’t give a damn about anything other than the mandate he has in his own head. He hates the Constitution as too limiting and proceeded to ignore it at his will. What makes anyone think he will do any differently in a second term.

Coming from Chicago, you saw what happened when the Bulls kept winning championships. I’m voting early and getting out of Dodge. I have no confidence in Emmanuel to contain the violence–it is coming, either way.

herm2416 on October 27, 2012 at 7:09 AM

You’re scaring me a bit. My darlin’ son lives downtown. I worry about him anyway but this just scares me.